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Reflections from Global s London Summit

I'm just back from the Global s Summit in London. One of the most exciting things for me was to finally meet Tharum (a Cambodian blogger) and pictured above face-to-face. Tharum and I have been in communication via our blogs, IM, and email for over a year now. In addition our participation at the conference, we got to discuss blogging while sharing a day of sightseeing in London.

This was Tharum's first trip to the West and it was interesting to observe his initial culture shock. I think it was more intense than a Westerner's culture shock visiting Cambodia for the first time. I vlogged it here:Download cultureshock.wmv

I'm still pretty fried, but wanted to capture some of my reflections about the GV London Summit experience.

First, there was a lot of energy in the room, similar to the blogher, because a lot of people had been reading each other's blogs or posts on GV, but had never met face-to-face. Also, the people in the room were coming from all corners of the world, many of them bloggers, and all passionate about their topics. It all translated into electricfying conversation -- both formally during the Summit and informally during social interaction. (I vlogged some of the friday night informal dinner - global dining partners - Download globaldinningpartners.wmv

The Summit was a full-day session with all 80 or so people in the same room. One might think that it would be difficult to sustain a truly interactive experience, but the way Ethan and Rebecca facilitated - it was an intense day-long conversation. Each session began with a brief framing and then the mike was carrying to some designated speakers who spoke to the topic from their seat - briefly making remarks. Then it was opened up for additonal comments and questions. It was very similar to the way the blogher opening plenary was facilitated. Meanwhile, people in the room where listening, blogging, or on the IRC as well as remote participants.

Yes, one day was way too short and definitely small group interaction would also have been good, but there is next year! (Next year in Nigeria?)

Jane Perrone, representing The Guardian, does a great job summarizing some of the conversation.

It was also a success in terms of an "intermediated conference" between the people who were in real-time, physical space and the virtual participants who were on the IRC or video conference connection. I hope that SJ Klein, Angelo, and others who made this happen generate some reflections on what they did and why it worked it so well -- but here's a few techniques that I thought helped make it work well.

IRC had two channels, one for transcription and one for the "backchannel" chat

The transcriber (SJ Klein of Wikimania fame) was typing a real-time transcription in the room, while Angelo, a blogger in Turkey was live blogging remotely.

Angelo grabbed flickr photos that were uploaded in real-time to add to the blog

The backchannel had a designated "IRC Advocate" who towards the end of a session summarized the comments and posed some of the questions that came up during the backchannel.

There are various channels for post-conference follow up discussion, including the listserv, IRC channel, and wiki. And this call to action from Rebecca "Above all, the important point here is that Global s will become what you make of it. GV’s future is not really up to me, or Ethan, or our Regional Editors, or Reuters, or any of our other sponsors or funders. We are really just trying to facilitate, support, enable, and draw attention to the conversations people want to have. The more initiative you take in shaping and contributing to GV, the more it will become what you want it to be."

I'm really interested in the discussion and thread on training and outreach for new bloggers and gonna jump right into the wiki now ..